Blurry
by WolvesTail
Summary: Quill knows the Infinity Stone haunts him, clutching him even as he sleeps a thousand stars away. As the Guardians of the Galaxy adjust to living together, he knows it would be a hell of a lot easier if he could stop being so damn jittery around them but he isn't about to tell them that's he's been trudging through their lives in his dreams.


The small raccoon felt the jarring pain cut a bloody swath across his senses as his nimble arms wrenched with all their might against the restraints. It was in vain; the unforgiving metal of the operating table would not bend under such a small force. Still, the pain drove his body to thrash in time with his primal screams. Incisions tugged the skin from his back with a sickening wet squelch. Something cold and unyielding pressed against his exposed nerves, burning and sizzling as it went.

His young mind clawed for any kind of distraction, but only the strong smell of disinfectant and blood polluted the room. Lights from the overhang were far too bright and burned his nocturnal eyes even as he clamped them shut. No sight or smell to fall back on, and he couldn't bear to think about touch, where the only sensation was an all-encompassing pain_._ Instead, he dived into the sounds around him; the strange tones and warbles reverberating from the creatures hurting him.

"...and 89P13 is responding well despite initial concerns that spinal damage could occur while he retains consciousness for the operation. With no anesthetic or inhibitors present, we are getting clear readouts of neural activity. It seems his nervous system has taken to the structural implants." The soft but garbled sounds meant nothing to the small creature, but it was all he could throw his focus on to escape. Another voice, deeper, began to speak, adding to the distraction.

"Excellent. Now that the implants are all online we can commit a compatibility test." A drill bit nuzzled its way into his exposed back and he lost the distraction he'd been treating himself to. His limbs strained so hard that he couldn't feel them anymore.

"Starting manual activation of cerebral augment." The woman's clipped voice barely registered in his senses. A thin pricking raced down his spine when the live wire tapped against the fresh implants. His whole world shrank down to one point and then new experiences assaulted his mind. The data stream made his senses fuzzy, yet the new sights and sounds were a strange kind of distraction from the pain. He began to learn of the world in words, snippets of phrases, grammar, and finally language. Then they connected another wire.

Peter snapped awake with a harsh gasp and sat up so fast that he flung himself head over heels off his bed. The turbulence aided him in puking all over the floor as he let out wet, stuttering gasps. His whole body shuddered from the rocketing force of it. Stomach calming, Peter set himself against his own mind, trying to even out his breathing. Getting new memories used to leave him confused for almost an hour as to who he was, but now he was sure he was getting the hang of it. Repeating the mantra, "My name is Peter Quill, I'm from Earth, I'm a human, I grew up with the Ravagers, with Yondu," after each time seemed to help ground him within a few minutes.

The thought processes of a nearly infant Rocket were more akin to primal instincts, and Peter found himself clumsy and unprepared for them. At some point in his efforts he must have stumbled upon the solution, as those thought processes dimmed before winking out entirely.

New memories from Rocket were almost unbearable, and Peter only had three, well, four now. Wiping his wet face with one hand, he pushed himself up with the other and started cleaning up. His limbs wouldn't stop shaking from all the straining they had acted out in his dream, a constant reminder that it was all horribly real. His thoughts drifted to how bizarre this all was; reliving the other Guardian's memories as a side effect of the infinity stone wasn't something he would have expected.

At first, it had been kinda pleasant. The only life he was living in his sleep was Gamora's. It started happy, with dreams of soft green skin, gentle fluttering laughs, and the trees of a now missing world. Then Thanos came and- he thrust the memory away, not letting himself slip into Gamora. He finished cleaning and plopped back onto his soft bed. Gripping his head, he struggled to keep the Guardian's memories from his own. A shudder ripped through him upon recalling the one time he got caught with someone else's mindset. It had felt so natural to tinker on one of 'his' projects that by the time Rocket had spotted him it was too late. Rocket still gave him appraising and irritated looks for turning his shatter grenade into a landmine.

The dreams seemed to be moving in chronological order, but the personality traits and skills he was unconsciously adopting seemed to come from all over the place.

Snapping free of his thoughts, Peter felt his raw throat throb from all his night time screaming; thank god for the Milano's soundproofing. Snagging a shirt from the floor, Peter dressed as he ambled to the yellow kitchen of the Milano. The low lighting of the interior suggested that it was still early in the night cycle on the ship. It surprised him to see Rocket, tinkering on something and sniffling every few seconds. Groot snoozed on the counter with a sun lamp keeping him warm. Knowing better than to say a word, Peter grabbed a pouch of water out of the unit and sat across from his furry friend. More than happy to sit in silence, Peter began to drift through his thoughts again when Rocket spoke up.

"Couldn't sleep either, huh sunshine?" Rocket's voice wasn't dragging or half asleep like Peter expected it would be.

"Yeah. You gonna be up awhile?" At the raccoon's nod Peter ventured back to his room for his data pad. Rocket twitched as Peter appeared once more moments later. They sat at a smooth metal table, working on their respective distractions until Peter broke the silence when a question in his mind slipped out. He hated how it was almost impossible to keep his mouth shut after the memories came.

"What the hell is a forest decompartmentalizer?" stunned silence stretched like the shadows cast by the sunlamp as Rocket stared. It shattered when he wheezed out a laugh.

"It's a component to a biosynthesizer, what they use to make lifeless planets have vegetation and all that crap. Where didja get that from?"

Peter couldn't do much more than shrug but made the mistake of giving an honest answer, "it was in my nightmare."

Rocket's mouth snapped shut at that, his face giving nothing away; he knew it had to be a coincidence. Yet, the question was already out of his mouth before he could stop it.

"What was it about? Uh, you know, if you wanna talk about it, I don't really care," wishing he could take it back Rocket waited as he hoped his nervous jumble of words put Quill off. Yet Peter hadn't seemed to notice, his gaze bore a hole into nothing as he got lost in the memory of the operating table, "Quill?"

Peter's eyes filled with unshed tears and he choked as the pain from the memories began to spill into his waking mind. Thin branches of Groot brushed Peter's hand, tearing him off the operating table and back into the Milano's neat kitchen. Unnerved, Rocket decided not to ask again, he had enough on his plate with his own damned nightmares. Whatever Quill was pulling through couldn't hold a candle to his own past haunting him.

"They were hurting me, I didn't even understand why or what they were doing but they made everything hurt all the time," he hadn't meant to say that much, hell, he hadn't meant to say much of anything but he pressed on anyway, compelled to get it _out_, "and there wasn't anything to focus on, I couldn't get out, I couldn't get away and it just kept hurting."

The gadget Rocket was holding made a heavy clank against the floor. Mumbling an apology, Rocket hopped down from his stool, more to hide his stunned reaction than to actually fetch the broken trinket. Being so bright and cheerful had made Rocket certain that Peter had never had it truly rough, but doubt crept up and made him wonder. If anything, it made Rocket frustrated that he hadn't noticed sooner.

"The Ravagers?" Rocket asked, already juggling ideas about how he would kill the lot of them. Yet the force of the _no _made him reconsider. Looking up, he could see the unshed tears that clung to Quill's eyes and felt a bit out of his field. Comforting others had never been a part of his job, the closest he'd ever gotten was to Groot, and even then, it worked out the other way around more often than not. He was saved when Quill passed him the data pad.

The email service for a Desdan White was pulled up, an alias for Quill no doubt, and a quick read informed Rocket of what could be their first job after saving Nova from Ronan. Just a little job that involved catching some pirates who had been stealing equipment and illegally mining asteroids. Something small to get them back into the groove of things.

"You down?" Quill asked. Rocket just snorted in reply, silently thankful to be able to focus on something other than Quill's plight or his own damned nightmares.

"Sure as hell, looks a bit too easy for us but the pay ain't too shabby."

Peter nodded and slid his finger across the data pad. Maps, routes, and a log of data streamed out and the more Rocket read the more he felt he could start to like being a Guardian.

"How do you think the others would take to infiltrating pirates, using them to rob the kree blind, then rob the pirates and turn them into Nova for the reward money?" Peter's question made Rocket let out a guffaw that he was sure twenty minutes ago couldn't have been forced out of him under pain of death.

"I think that with the right modifications to your plan, they'd be stupid to turn this down. I want to be the one to hijack their ship and attack the Kree that they're supposed to be trading with."

Cracking a grin at Rocket's devious expression, Peter let out a lighthearted laugh. That morning Gamora would be shocked to find Peter and Rocket up early and discussing the finer points of how to make a ship explode 'accidently'. She wasn't sure she wanted to know until she heard: Kree, pirates, scam, and Nova all used in one sentence. As Drax and Groot woke up and joined them in the kitchen, a solid plan was actually starting to come together.

* * *

Author's Note: This is the beginning of a big one, as I've got a _lot _of ideas for where this can go. Might turn into a series of one shots, or I might make it a continuous story, still pretty ambivalent on that. Also, enormous shout out to division-ten's _Mirror House_ and _Here's Looking At You, Kid_, as well as BunnyRock's _a Bit of Both_ for inspiring this. Anyway, thanks for reading!


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